Renaissance Trophy Wife

I can just hear it now… yeah, right, crepes are healthy?  Well, they’re not a health food per se, but there are ways to make them healthier, particularly in your choice of filling.  My version packs in calcium, vitamins, and fiber, but tastes absolutely sinful.

Here’s where the healthy part comes in; layer fat-free vanilla yogurt with whatever fruit you have on hand.   I used canned raspberries that I had left over from a scone recipe, and sliced banana.  YUM.  The yogurt has a creamy texture that’s an acceptable substitute for pastry cream if you’re not being too picky– and you get fewer calories plus a dose of calcium.  The fruit will pack in a bunch of fiber and vitamins, too.   (Yes, that is butter in the picture above, but the BF uses a little of that instead of yogurt.)

If you’ve been extra good and really want to indulge, top it off with a drizzle of chocolate syrup.  (That’s a drizzle, not a lake.)  But this isn’t just any chocolate syrup, it’s Trader Joe’s Midnight Moo, a fat-free version that tastes pretty decadent if you’re trying to stave off Nutella cravings.

And here’s the crepe recipe, with my stealthy healthy substitutions noted.

Basic Crepes
Makes ~12 crepes, using 1/4 cup of batter per crepe.

1 cup AP flour
(I use about 1/2 King Arthur’s white flour and 1/2 King Arthur’s white whole wheat flour; the texture is a little heavier, but still yummy. I also add about 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed for those healthy omega-3s.)
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
(I use 1.5 cups vanilla soy milk instead of the milk and water– hello, isoflavones!)
2 tsp melted butter
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla/almond/lemon extract if you have it

Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.  Blend the wet ingredients together in a blender.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, and process until smooth.  Refrigerate 1 hour to let the air bubbles come out.  (You can also be bad and skip the settling stage; your crepes will have more little air bubbles but if you’re in a hurry, that may not matter.  They still taste great.)

I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to pour the batter into the pan– the little spout on the side is helpful in minimizing drips, and it also makes your crepes somewhat uniform in size.

One of the things I worried about when I first started making crepes was the potential of burning, but a crepe is so much thinner than a pancake, it cooks through relatively quickly, plus it’s really easy to tell when the crepes need to be flipped.  I will say that the pan you use is key– get one that’s pretty heavy, so it heats evenly with no hot spots.

Here, I’ve just poured the batter into my awesome crepe pan; you can see it’s kind of shiny on the surface.  (Yes, shiny is a technical term.)

A little later, you can see that the edges are more opaque, compared to the middle part of the crepe.  You want to wait until most of the crepe takes on that opacity before flipping.

They only need to be finished for ab0ut 15-20 seconds after flipping; then remove to a plate and keep warm in the oven.  I’ve gotten partial to putting plates in the microwave instead, since turning on the oven just to keep food warm is not very green. You’re not microwaving the food, just letting it sit with the door closed, but it stays hot for a good while because of the excellent insulation.

The first crepe is always a test crepe– you can adjust your heat based on that one.  Who knows, maybe that’s something cooks made up so they always got a crepe first before the rest got scarfed down…  but it works for me!

Bon appetit!

RTW